The forecast calls for 25 Celcius with sunshine. I’m sitting at my desk in the library (ok, it’s an office, but library is so much more romantic sounding – even though it’s painted baby blue from when Jackson was a baby and I was kind enough to move into the sunshine-y yellow room that faces the backyard) and the skies are not filled with sunshine. They are a dark mysterious lavender that are turning the leaves a bright lime green. It’s going to storm.

Sometimes when you wake up in the morning you bounce out of bed and think ‘this is going to be a gloooorious day!’. The sun is shining, your tea is hot and perfectly sweet and spicy, your favourite shirt just came out of the dryer and it’s the perfect cool weather for your slippers to snuggle into. And some morning you don’t want to get up because you have too much to do or you have a meeting that you don’t want to attend or even see a friend you are unsure about. Or you wake up and have no idea what the day will be like.

It’s the same with writing.

I’m not talking about good days of writing or bad days of writing, I’m talking about a writer’s heart. Do you know that it is really hard doing this? I can’t even imagine what really good/selling well/multi-millionaire writers feel. Some days I feel terribly unimportant in the writing world. That no one could be bothered to be excited that my new book is coming out, which in turn, makes me feel apathetic about my new book coming out. And some days I get an encouraging email saying, ‘this is awesome’ or ‘I’m so glad you’ve written another’ and ‘you can do it!’ I feel like I can do anything. I can write anything. And it will be awesome. I am awesome.

So I’ve decided that once a week, I am going to do a few things.

1) I will write a letter to encourage an author. The book I am reading, if I am loving it, I will hunt down the author’s webpage and email them, telling them I love their book, to keep it up, to be patient with themselves and kind to themselves as they write.

2) I am going to write a letter to a friend or a new friend or someone I just kinda know. I used to write encouraging letters all the time and I think I stopped because people stopped noticing. No thank you, no ‘wow I felt so awesome getting that in the mail!’. And the purpose isn’t so I’d feel good, but so that they’d feel good. I need to start doing that again.

3) I’m stuck here. There needs to be a number three and I’m drawing a blank. Hm. I’ll think of something.

And I will totally post the radio interview once I get it in my computer email. And figure out how.

Reading: Eden. A 99cent buy on Kindle. Not bad.

Watching: He’s just not that into you. I love stories where everyone’s lives connect somehow. Like Love Actually and Valentine’s Day.

3 Comments

Any leads on a #3 yet? Something i thought of as I watched Caleb chase some remnants of apple sauce around his bowl last night was to make sure and take “mental snapshots” of images of my kids that I want to try to lock into memory!

We are excited for the second one! my kids really liked #1. We live in Ottawa and are hoping you do some local readings or signings because they’ve never met a real live author! So that is 3 excited people anyway